Euripides’ Alcestis
- The performance of drama in the classical age was a marathon event. The performance of dramas at the festival called the City Dionysia, three tragic poets produced on successive days 3 tragedies and a satyr play. Euripides’ Alcestis was the fourth play in its tetralogy and is therefore offered up in place of a satyr play. This has led some scholars to think of it as maybe a hybrid of tragedy and a satyr play with elements that are not generally considered tragic: a happy ending, some comic elements. But it’s also true that one can find other plays that have comic elements – esp. in Euripides; and plays that end happily.
- Elements of Greek tragedy: a highly stylized form that doesn’t always translate well into modern theater without changing it into the language and grammar of modern theater. The structural elements of a Greek tragedy are these: prologue (everything that happens before the chorus enters): parados (the chorus enters), an alternation of (usually spoken) episodes, which advance the storyline and choral songs (which reflect on those episodes. One central feature of Greek drama is the agon (contest), in which two important characters debate an important issue. In our play, the agon is between Admetus and his father, Pheres. In the Medea, the agon is between Jason and Medea. You will have noticed from these examples that the agon resembles something like a debate or a court case.
- As you read the Alcestis one thing that should become clear to you is that we can’t approach Greek myth through primary sources in the way you might study driver’s ed. Mythological allusions that aren’t explained run through the work. (Footnotes help)
- And in analyzing the Alcestis, it’s also clear that one can choose a number of issues to focus on. For instance:
- The relationship between folktale and myth: especially the ways myth makes use of folktale.
- Patterns of heroism, ways that heroic values can expand to encompass new sensibilities.
- The portrayal of Herakles
- Gender roles
- And, of course, we want to consider the Alcestis as a work of art that is a vehicle for exploring the issues that Euripides was interested in setting before his audience.
- Folktale motif of somehow evading death: too many variants to catalogue: among the more common based on Greek and Hebraic folktales is the idea of Death getting caught in a tree and unable to escape. The Alcestis story is adopted and adapted by a number of modern authors, e.g. T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, and the Broadway play One Borrowed Time about which Wikipedia says this:
[On Borrowed Time is a 1939 film about the role death plays in life, and how humanity cannot live without it. It is adapted from Paul Osborn‘s 1938 Broadway hit play. The play, based on a novel by Lawrence Edward Watkin, has been revived twice on Broadway since its original run. Academy Award winner (for his 1937 short film Torture Money) Harold S. Bucquet directed. The story is a retelling of a Greek fable in which Death is tricked into climbing a pear tree which had been blessed by Saint Polycarp to trap anyone who was trying to steal an old woman’s pears.]
- As often in Greek tragedy, and this is the norm for Euripides, the prologue sets out many of the themes that will continue to resonate as the play goes on. Apollo served as an indentured slave to Admetus because he had offended Zeus. Behind all this is an offense of Apollo’s son Asclepius: raising the dead. It goes against the workings of Zeus’s universe. So even before Apollo’s intervention in Admetus’ life/death the theme is already manifest.
- A constant drumbeat of Greek thought is that death is inevitable, unpredictable, & irreversible. But look at what happens in our play: No longer unpredictable. What sorts of problems might this cause? The lines between life and death are blurred simply because you know when it’s going to happen. We know this is the day Alcestis is destined to die.